Was it the fact that our country was being set up for one of the biggest stings in history?

Was it that our financial regulator was laughed at as a bumbling fool by executives of the failed bank while the bank’s management was plotting a huge scam?

Was it the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly yuk-yukking as they discussed inflicting a gigantic lie on the citizens of this state?

Any of that is likely to induce nausea, but for me, it was something else. It was that small word “they”.

The strategy is that if you pull them in, you get them to write a big cheque and they have to keep, they have to support their money …

They?

Who did these executives think they were talking about when they discussed the possibility of sucking money from a third party to compensate for their bank’s incompetently-managed affairs? Did it dawn on them at all that the burden they were about to inflict on the country they presumably claim allegiance to was tantamount to sabotage?

Did it bother either of these two chuckling fools that they were discussing undermining our society?

I don’t know, but it certainly doesn’t come across in their jocose conversation that they had the slightest understanding of how the Anglo chicanery would impact on their fellow citizens and perhaps that’s where the clue lies. Maybe neither of these inflated fools had the least grasp of what it means to be a citizen. Perhaps their citizenship is in a different country, a place where AIB was “Allied”, where Irish Permanent was “Permo”, where Bank of Ireland was simply “Bank”. A place, in other words, where arrogant, self-regarding tosspots like “Drummer” and Fitzy felt they were entitled to game the entire State, regardless of the consequences for the little people.

I can’t begin to express the extent of my contempt for these people and their like, but however contemptible we might find them, what level of disgust do we retain for the political idiots who believed the lies and placed our country in hock for generations to come so that leeches might remain in comfort to the end of their days?

It would be a mistake to think that these two fools controlled the scam, but they’re close enough to the core to be aware of the subtleties. What this tape reveals is the extent of cynicism that pervaded Anglo, and perhaps the other banks as well. It reveals that there was a mindset oblivious to notions of civic responsibility.

Did the senior bankers regard themselves as citizens of a nation with concomitant responsibilities? On the face of the evidence, the answer has to be no, and yet they continue to live among us, availing of the protections due to Irish citizens.

Clever Dicks Bock, sneering at the idiots who were going to have to follow the billions deeper and deeper ’till they/we got lost up to our eyeballs in their gambling debts.
We may never get to the end of it, and if and when we do, these scumbags will still be free, and enjoying their usual game of golf in Druids Glen etc.

I’d imagine that they will be hightailing it to safer and warmer climes very shortly. There they can live in luxury on their enormous pensions and bonuses. Before the can do so they should be captured and strung from lampposts, by the balls, with piano wire.

The very least we must do is strip them of every penny of their ill-gotten gains and let them taste penury for the rest of their hopefully short and miserable lives.
But, of course, these two are not alone in this treason and similar justice should be meted out to all their cronies in the then FF cabinet, and a whole clatter of other ‘golden-circle’ scum.

Anyone who has played poker knows how to lure other players in to play a much bigger hand than they can afford. This is exactly what Bowe and Fitzgerald did. Except it wasn’t poker chips they were playing with.

In the years since these fraudulent negotiations, metrics such as suicide, depression, homelessness, emigration, domestic violence, inequality and the at-risk-of-poverty rate, have escalated at unprecedented rates. Garda stations have been closed, public sector salaries cut and taxes raised. Patients still remain on trolleys in overcrowded casualty wards staffed by overworked medical professionals. Human Rights organisations have had their funding withdrawn. I’m sure you can add your own austerity measure to the list, as the cost of servicing the public debt has added up over time.

Yerra lads chill out the pricks in power now are playing right into the hands of these guys.
What are we going to have ? guess go on guess a fucking banking inquiry ! yup, almost any other country would have proceeded with criminal charges years ago,
But us ah no lads we could not be having that at all at all, Sure Trish and Philip have just been called to the bar, what we need now is a nice long inquiry costing ah sure 30 to 70 million let it run for 8 years and produce a report that no one will ever read.

Is an INquiry not a Tribunal; that which uses opinions Not evidence to form a consequence-free conclusion years later? Which by then the scoundrels have passed away or are elderly, unfit for trial. Tribunals for banksters/puppet establishment, court trials and the ‘slammer for us who fail to cough up for the telly licence! No Irish spring revolution. We’re better at failed rebellions.

Our Teutonic masters are only too happy to now have another reason why they should not help with a retrospective assistance package for our distrous bank guarantee–they will plead that because it is likely that Anglo (and possibly other banks) may have acted illegally and our regulators were incompetent, that they have no moral obligation to help out; ( and mocking them with their former National Anthem hasn’t helped our cause either).What strange little Pixie heads we are!
It’s a matter for the Courts; Government investigations are useless; unless they have the teeth to dispense punishment. One wonders why in fuck’s name it has taken 5 years and still no one has stood trial. My bad side thinks of all the lonely lamp posts in all the ghost estates just waiting for the company banker’s and gombeen politicians necks. But we have had enough tragedy in this country;tragic suicides and family breakups, emigration and despair; so hanging the bastards might be attractive but would ultimately be wrong–but we need to see them stand trial and we need it soon.

Whats’ dumbfounding is the lack of due diligence undertaken during the bailout process. Surely to secure any type of funding there needs to be some kind of professional evaluation undertaken.
It sounds as if these guys just rocked-up and asked for “loike, loike €7 billion or so” and were told “grand”.

The issue has many components, not just one. We tend to divide this story into one class of category, the protagonists, namely the bankers, the civil servants and the politicians, but there is a different way to look at it, if you’re interested in analysing instead of simply apportioning blame.

There was greed. There was dishonesty. There was incompetence. There was cynicism.

All participants displayed these characteristics. If we want to understand the disaster, we need to look at it from that point of view. Much though I’d personally like to string the bankers up, such thinking won’t lead us anywhere.

The Civil Service represents the citizens of the Republic of Ireland. Correct me if I am wrong but this representation includes the Central Bank of Ireland.
Bankers are business men. Most business men are egotistical and greedy by nature. In fact these traits would be considered attributes in the business world.
Our Civil Servants, the paid by our tax’s citizens representatives, did not provide proper auditing or checks on these Banks (business men) and they were allow a free hand to control the banks in whatever way they wished.
What happens when you leave go of a small Childs hand in a sweet shop? That’s what happened!
Simplistic analogy I accept. But not far off the mark.

Neary, the regulator, was clearly not doing his job, and he seems to have been unhealthily friendly with the Anglo mob. However, the civil servants didn’t audit the banks. That was done by private accounting firms who continue to thrive and prosper despite failing to sound the alarm.

The politicians are also culpable for agreeing to pump money into these failed businesses. That should never have been done.

It’s probably extreme to suggest that all business people are unethical, but certainly the bankers needed tp be kept on a tight leash, and they weren’t. The question is, which members of the Dáil, the judiciary and the gardai were indebted to the non-banks?

Willie is being evasive as usual. It wasn’t necessary for them to know the full picture, just to have enough suspicions. If they needed help with this, they could have consulted those well-informed al fresco canines, the dogs in the street.

You need 7Billion–show me your books–prove you are solvent–that was the minimum that should have happened. I guess that the Anglo/Bank/IP/Allied boys had rubbed shoulders with their friends in FF in the tent and at a myriad of golf events–first name terms–I’d love to know how much money was donated by Anglo and the others to the greedy gombeen soldiers of destiny–they need to prove they had no conflict of interest on the fateful night they pledged our money and our children’s futures. Follow the money.

I keep coming back to this, I know, but the Civil Service must bear a large amount of the responsibility. They are the paid representatives of the Citizens of the republic and its their job to protect us from Stupid Political leaders and Greedy Bankers. The Civil Service should not be deterred from doing their job and their job – in my opinion was to carry out tough auditing and stress testing on all our banks, all the time, in particular during the Celtic Tiger years. They did nothing to protect the Citizens of the state and many of these senior civil servants as as much worthy of a criminal investigation as are those Bankers and Politian’s who were in power at the time. But who’s going to investigate?

I think a lot of them failed to do their jobs whether through incompetence or otherwise, but as with all these things, there is a hierarchy of guilt.

At the top are those who knowingly colluded to defraud the state. Next come those who acquiesced and consciously failed to intervene. After that, there are people who simply failed to grasp what was taking place.

There’s a great old legal question: “cui bono?” Who benefits. Once we know who stood to gain from the scam we’ll know where to point the finger.